The Warrnambool and Moyne mayors have launched Princes Highway West upgrade concepts for a high traffic volume section of the highway.

Warrnambool City Council Mayor Cr Tony Herbert and Moyne Shire Mayor Cr Mick Wolfe released a set of preliminary plans which illustrate suggested upgrade and duplication works for a 7km stretch of the highway between Rooney’s Road and Southern Cross Road.

“We were delighted when the local member for Wannon, Dan Tehan gave our community a guaranteed commitment of $60 million for this important work, back on May 8 during the election campaign,” Cr Herbert said.

Cr Wolfe said the reason the proposed work on this stretch of Prince’s Highway West needed to be prioritised, was because of its very high traffic volumes.

“We have 15,000 vehicles using this stretch of road every day. That’s the highest volume of traffic outside of Geelong, that is currently battling with mostly single lane access.”

“And when you consider that 11 per cent of that traffic is heavy vehicles, that’s almost 1600 heavy vehicles on that stretch every day, along with thousands of other vehicles, all trying to navigate a poor quality road - and speed restrictions - with very few opportunities to overtake safely,” he said.

“It just has to be fixed.”

Warrnambool and Moyne are members of the Princes Highway West Action Alliance (PHWAA), along with the Shires of Corangamite and Colac Otway.

Alliance spokesman Trevor Greenberger said the group had moved forward with a design in a bid to encourage both the Victorian and Federal Governments to start work.

He said the two mayors were now seeking meetings with senior Department of Transport staff to progress the concept plans to working drawings, ready for implementation.

“We hope this potential design might be the catalyst to finally start some action,” he said.